ROLAND YORKE'S SHOULDER TO THE WHEEL.
The weeks went on. Roland Yorke was hard at work, carrying out his
resolve of "putting his shoulder to the wheel." Vague ideas of getting
into something good, by which a fortune might be made, floated through
his brain in rose-coloured clouds. What the something was to be he did
not exactly know; meanwhile, as a preliminary to it, he sought and
obtained copying from Greatorex and Greatorex, to be done in spare
hours at home. Of which fact Roland (unlike Mr. Brown) made no secret;
he talked of it to the whole office; and Mr. Brown supplied him
openly.
It was an excessively hot evening, getting now towards dusk. Roland
had carried his work to Mrs. Jones's room, not so much because his own
parlour was rather close and stuffy, as that he might obtain slight
intervals of recreative gossip. He had it to himself, however, for
Mrs. Jones was absent on household cares. The window looked on a
backyard, in which the maid, who had come out, was hanging up a red
table-cover to dry, that had evidently had something spilled on it. Of
course Roland arrested his pen to watch the process. He was sitting in
his shirtsleeves, and had just complained aloud that it was hotter
than Africa.
"Who did that?" he called out through the open window. "You?"
"Mr. Ollivera, sir. He upset some ink; and mistress have been washing
the place out in layers of cold water. She don't think it'll show."
"What d'ye call layers?"
"Different lots, sir. About nineteen bowlfuls she swilled it through;
and me a emptying of 'em at the sink, and droring off fresh water
ready to her hand."
The hanging-out and pulling the damaged part straight took a tolerably
long time; Roland, in the old seduction of any amusement being welcome
as an accompaniment to work, continued to look on and talk. Suddenly,
he remembered his copying, and the young lady for whose sake he had
undertaken the labour.
"This is not sticking to it," he soliloquised. "And if I am to have
her, I must work for her. _Won't_ I work, that's all! I'll stick to it
like any brick! But this copying is poor stuff to get a fellow on. If
I could only slip into something better!"
Considering that Mr. Roland Yorke's earnings the past week, what with
mistakes and other failures, had been one shilling and ninepence, and
the week previous to that fifteenpence, it certainly did not look as
though the copying would prove the high road to fortune. He began
casting about other projects in his mind, as he wrote.
"If they'd give me a place under Government, it would be the very
thing. But they don't. Old Dick Yorke's as selfish as a camel, and
Carrick's hiding his head, goodness knows where. So I am thrown on my
own resources. Bless us all! when a fellow wants to get on in this
world, he can't."
At this juncture Roland came to the end of his paper. As it was a good
opportunity for taking a little respite, he laid down his pen, and
exercised his thoughts.
"There's those photographing places--lots of them springing up. You
can't turn a corner into a street but you come bang upon a fresh
establishment. They can't require a fellow to have any previous
knowledge, they can't. I wonder if any of them would take me on, and
give me a couple of guineas a-week, or so? Nothing to do there, but
talk to the visitors, and take their faces. I should make a good hand
at that. But, perhaps, _she'd_ not like it! She might object to marry
a man of that sort. What a difficulty it is to get into anything! I
must think of the other plan."
The other plan meant some nice place under Government. To Roland that
always seemed a sure harbour of refuge. The doubt was, how to get it?
"There's young Dick--Vincent, as he likes to be called now,"
soliloquised Roland. "I've never asked him to help me, but perhaps he
might: he's not ill-natured where his pocket's not called in question.
I'll go to him tomorrow; see if I don't. Now then, are you dry?"
This was to the writing. Roland rose up to get more paper, and then
found that he had left it behind him at the office--some that he ought
to have brought home.
"There's a bother! I wonder if I could get it by going round? Of
course the offices are closed, but I'd not mind asking Bede for the
key if he's in the way."
To think and to act were one with Roland. He put on his coat, took his
hat, and went hastening along on his expedition. Rather to his
surprise, as he drew to his walk's end, his quick eyes, casting
themselves into dark spots as well as light ones, caught sight of Bede
Greatorex standing in the shade opposite his house, apparently
watching its lighted windows, from which sounds of talking and
laughing issued forth. Roland conjectured that some gaiety was as
usual going on in the house, which its master would escape. Over he
went to him, without ceremony.
"You don't like all that, sir?" he said, indicating the supposed
company.
"Not too much of it," replied Bede Greatorex, startled out of his
reverie by the unexpected address. "The fact is," he condescended to
explain to his curious clerk, perhaps as an excuse for standing there,
"certain matters have been giving me trouble of late. I was in deep
thought."
"Mrs. Bede Greatorex does love society: she did as Louisa Joliffe,"
remarked Roland, meaning to be confidential.
"I was not thinking of Mrs. Bede Greatorex, but of the loss from my
office," spoke his master in a cold, proud tone of reproof.
Crossing the road, as if declining further conversation, he went in.
Roland saw he had offended him, and wished his tongue had been tied,
laying down his thoughtless speech as usual to the having sojourned at
Port Natal. It might not be a propitious moment for requesting the
loan of the office keys, and Roland had the sense to foresee it.
Who should come out of the house at that moment, but Annabel Channing,
attended by a servant. The sight of her put work, keys, and all else,
out of Roland's head. He leaped across, seized her hands, and learnt
that she had got leave to spend the evening with Hamish and his wife.
"_I'll_ take care of you; _I'll_ see you safely there," cried Roland,
impetuously. "You can go back, old Dalla."
Old Dalla--a middle-aged yellow woman who had brought Jane Greatorex
from India and remained with the child as her attendant--made no more
ado, but took him at his word; glad to be spared the walk, she turned
indoors at once. And before Annabel well knew what had occurred, she
found herself being whirled away by Roland in an opposite direction to
the one she wished to go. It was only twilight yet. Roland had her
securely on his arm, and began to pace the square. To say the truth,
he looked on the meeting as a special chance, for he had not once set
eyes on the young lady, save in the formal presence of others, since
that avowal of his a fortnight ago, in Mr. Greatorex's room.
"What are you doing?" she asked, when she could collect herself "This
is not the way to Hamish's."
"This is the way to get a few words with you, Annabel; one can't talk
in the streets with its glare and its people. We are private here; and
I'll take you to Hamish's in a minute or two."
In this impulsive fashion, he began telling her his plans and his
dreams. That he had determined to make an income and a home for her:
as a beginning, until something better turned up, he was working all
his spare time at copying deeds, "nearly night and day." One less
unsophisticated than Roland Yorke, might have suppressed a small item
of the programme--that which related to Annabel's contributing to the
fund herself, by obtaining pupils. Not he. He avowed it just as openly
as his own intention of getting "something under Government." In
short, Roland made the young lady a regular offer. Or, rather, did not
so much _make_ the offer, as assume that it had been already made, and
was, so far, settled. His arguments were sensible; his plans looked
really feasible; the day-dreams tolerably bright.
"But I have not said I would have you yet," spoke Annabel all in a
flutter, when she could get a word in edgeways. "You should not make
so sure of things."
"Not make sure of it! Not have me!" cried Roland, in indignant
remonstrance. "Now look you here, Annabel--you _know_ you'll have me: it
is all nonsense to make believe you won't. I don't suppose I've asked
you in the proper way, or put things in the proper light; but you
ought to make allowance for a fellow who has had his manners knocked
out of him at Port Natal. When the time arrives that I've got a little
house and a few chairs and tables in its rooms, you'll come home to me
and I'll try and make you happy in it, and work for you till I drop!
There! If I knew how to say it better, I would: and you need not
despise a man for his incapable way of putting it. Not have me! I'd
like to know who you would have, if not me!"
Annabel Channing offered no farther remonstrance. That she had
contrived to fall in love with Roland Yorke, and would rather marry
him than anybody else in the world, she knew all too well. The home
and the chairs and the tables in it, and the joint working together to
keep it going, wore a bright vista to her heart, looked at from a
distance with youth's hopeful eyes. But she did not speak: and Roland,
mistaking her silence, regarded it as a personal injury.
"When I and Arthur are the dearest friends in the world! He'd give you
to me off-hand; I know it. It is not kind of you, Annabel. We engaged
ourselves to each other when you were a little one and I was a tall
donkey of fourteen, and if I've ever thought of a wife at all since I
grew up, it was of you. I have done nothing but think of you since I
came back. I wonder how _you'd_ feel if I turned round and said, 'I
don't know that I shall have you.' Not jovial, I know."
"You should not bring up the nonsense we said when we were children,"
returned Annabel, at a loss what else to answer. "I'm sure I could not
have been above seven. We were playing at oranges and lemons: I
remember the evening quite well: and you----"
"Now just you be open, Annabel, and say what it is your mind's
harbouring against me," interrupted Roland, in a tone of deep feeling.
"Is it that twenty-pound note of old Galloway's?--or is it because I
went knocking about at Port Natal?"
"Oh, Roland, how foolish you are! As if I could think of either!"
And there was something in the words and tone, in the pretty, shy,
blushing face that reassured Roland. From that moment he looked upon
matters as irrevocably settled, gave Annabel's hand a squeeze against
his side, and went on to enlarge upon his dreams of the future.
"I've taken counsel with myself and with Mrs. J., and I don't think
the pair of us are likely to be led astray by romance, Annabel, for
she is one of the strong-minded ones. She agrees with me that we might
do well on three hundred a year; and, what with my work and your
pupils, we could make that easily. But, I said to her, let's be on the
safe side, and put it down at only two hundred. Just to begin with,
you know, Annabel. She said, 'Yes, we might do on that if we were both
economical'--and I'm sure if I've not learnt to be _that_ I've learnt
nothing. I would not risk the temptation of giving away--which I am
afraid I'm prone to--for you should be cash-keeper, Annabel; just as
Mrs. J. keeps my sovereign a week now. My goodness! the having no
money in one's pocket is a safeguard. When I see things in the shop
windows, whether it's eatables, or what not, I remember my lack of
cash, and pass on. I stopped to look at a splendid diamond necklace
yesterday in Regent Street, and thought how much I should like to get
it for you; but with empty pockets, where was the use of going in to
enquire the price?"
"I do not care for diamonds," said Annabel.
"You will have them some time, I hope, when my fortune's made. But
about the two hundred a year? Mrs. J. said if we could be sure of
making that regularly, she thought we might risk it; only, _she_ said
there might be interruptions. It would not be Mrs. J. if she didn't
croak."
"Interruptions!" exclaimed Annabel, something as Roland had
interrupted Mrs. Jones, and quite as unsuspicious as he. "Of what
kind?"
"Sickness, Mrs. J. mentioned, and--but I don't think I'll tell you
that," considered Roland. "Let's say, and general contingencies. I'm
sure I should as soon have thought of setting up a menagerie of owls,
but for her putting it into my head. A fellow who has helped to land
boats at Port Natal can't be expected to foresee everything. Would you
be afraid to encounter the two hundred a year?"
"I fear mamma would for me. And Hamish."
"Now Annabel, don't you get bringing up objections for other people.
Time enough for that when they come down with them of their own
accord. I intend to speak to Hamish tonight if I can get the
opportunity. I don't want you to keep your promise a secret. You are a
dear good girl, and the little home shall be ours before a
twelvemonth's gone by, if I have to work my hands off."
The little home! Poor Roland! If he could but have foreseen what
twelve months would bring forth.
Hamish Channing's book had come out under more favourable auspices
than Gerald's. The publisher, far from demanding money in advance for
expenses, had made fair terms with him. Of course the result would
depend on the sale. When Hamish held the first copies in his hand, his
whole being was lighted up with silent enthusiasm; the joy it was to
bring, the appreciation, had already set in. He sent a copy to his
mother; and he sent one to Gerald Yorke, with a brief, kind note: in
the simplicity of his heart, he supposed Gerald would rejoice, just as
he at first had rejoiced for him.
How good the book was, Hamish knew. The publisher knew. The world,
Hamish thought, would soon know. He did not deceive himself in its
appreciation, or exaggerate the real worth and merits of the work: in
point of fact, the praise meted out to Gerald's would have been really
applicable to his. Never did Hamish, even in his moments of extremest
doubt and diffidence, cast a thought to the possibility that his book
would be cried down. Already he was thinking of beginning a second;
and his other work, the occasional papers, went on with a zest.
He sat with his little girl, Nelly, on his knee, on this selfsame
evening that Roland had pounced on Annabel. The child had her blue
eyes and her bright face turned to him as she chattered. He looked
down fondly at her and stroked the pretty curls of her golden hair.
"And when will the ship be home, papa?"
"Very soon now. It is nearing the port."
"But when will it be quite, quite, quite home?"
"In a few days, I think, Nelly. I am not sure, but I ought to say it
has come."
"It was those books that came in the parcel last night?" said shrewd
little Nelly.
"Even so, darling."
"Mamma has been reading them all day. I saw"--Nelly put her sweet face
close up and dropped her voice--"I saw her crying at places of them."
A soft faint crimson stole into Hamish Channing's cheeks; his lips
parted, his breath came quicker; a sudden radiance illuminated his
whole countenance. This whisper of the child's brought to his heart
its first glad sense of that best return--appreciation.
Company arrived to interrupt the quiet home happiness. Mrs. Gerald
Yorke and her three meek children. Winny had a face of distress, and
made a faint apology for bringing the little ones, but it was over
early to leave them in bed. Close upon this, Roland and Annabel
entered, and had the pleasure of being in time to hear Gerald's wife
tell out her grievances.
They were of the old description. No money, importunate creditors,
Gerald unbearably cross. Annabel felt inclined to smile; Roland was
full of sympathy. Had the prospective fortune (that he was sure to
make) been already in his hands, he would have given a purse of gold
to Winny, and carried off the three little girls to a raree-show there
and then. The next best thing was to promise them the treat: which he
did largely.
"And me too, Roland," cried eager Nelly, dancing in and out amid the
impromptu visitors in the highest glee, her shining curls never still.
"Of course _you_," said Roland to the fair child who had come to an
anchor before him, flinging her arms upon his knees. "I'd not go
anywhere without you, you know, Nelly. If I were not engaged to
somebody else, I'd make you my little wife."
"Who is the somebody else? Kitty?"
"Not Kitty. She's too little."
"Let it be me, then."
Roland laughed, and looked across at Hamish. "If I don't ask you for
her, I may for somebody else. So prepare."
"I'm sure, I hope, Roland, if ever you do marry, that you'll not be
snappish with your wife and little girls, as your brother is with us,"
interposed Winny with a sob. "I think it is something in Mr.
Channing's book that has put him out today. As soon as it came this
morning, he locked himself in the room alone with it, and never came
out for hours; but when he did come--oh, was he not in a temper! He
pushed Winnifred and she fell on the carpet, and he shook Rosy till
she cried; and nobody knows for what. I'm sure they are like mice for
quietness when he's there; they are too much afraid of him to be
otherwise."
It was well for Gerald Yorke that he committed no grave crimes; for
his wife, in her childish simplicity, in her inability to bear in
silence, would be safe to have betrayed them. She was right in her
surmises--in fact, Winny, with all her silliness, had a great deal of
discernment--that the cause of her husband's temper being worse than
usual was Hamish Channing's book. Seizing upon it when it came, Gerald
locked himself up with it, forbidding any interruption in terms that
might not be disobeyed. On the surface alone he could see that it was
no sham book: Gerald's book had about twenty lines in a page, and the
large, wide, straggling type might have been read a mile off. This was
different: it was closely printed, rather than not, as if the writer
were at no fault for matter. In giving a guinea and a half for this
work, the public would not find itself deluded into finding nothing to
read. Gerald sat down. He was about to peruse this long-expected book,
and he devoutly hoped to find it bad and worthless.
But, if Gerald Yorke could not write, he could appreciate: and with
the first commencing pages he saw what the work really was--rare,
good, of powerful interest; essentially the production of a good man,
a scholar, and a gentleman.
As he read on and on, his brow grew dark with a scowl, his lips were
angrily bitten: the book, properly noticed, would certainly set the
world a-longing: and Gerald might experience some difficulty in
writing it down. The knowledge did not tend to soften his generally
ill-conditioned state of mind, and he flung the last volume on the
table with a harsh word. Even at that early stage, some of the
damnatory terms he would use to extinguish the book passed through his
active brain.
Emerging from his retreat towards evening in this genial mood, he made
those about him suffer from it. Winny, the non-enduring, might well
wish to escape with her helpless children! Gerald departed; to keep an
engagement at a white-bait entertainment; and she came to Hamish
Channing's.
How different were the two men! Hamish Channing's heart had ached to
pain at the badness of Gerald's book, for Gerald's sake; had he been a
magician, he would have transformed its pages, with a stroke of his
wand, to the brightest and best ever given to the world. Gerald Yorke
put on the anger of a fiend because Hamish's work was _not_ bad; and
laid out his plans to ruin it.
"Man, vain man, dressed in a little brief authority,
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven
As make the angels weep."
If the world is not entirely made up of these two types of men, the
bad and the good, the narrow-hearted and the wide, the kindly generous
and the cruelly selfish, believe me there are a vast many of each in
it.
"It's getting worse and worse," sobbed Winny, continuing her
grievances over the tea-table. "I don't mean Gerald now, but the
shortness of money and the worry. I know we shall have to go into the
workhouse!"
"Bless you, don't lose heart!" cried Roland with a beaming face. "_I_
can never lose that again, after the ups and downs in Africa. I'll
tell you of one, Mrs. Gerald.--Another piece of muffin, Kitty? there
it is.--I and another fellow had had no food to speak of for two days;
awfully low we were. We went into a store and they gave us some
advertising bills to paste on the walls. Well, somehow I lost the
fellow and the bills, for he had taken possession of them. I went
rushing about everywhere, looking for him--and that's not so pleasant
when your inside's as hollow as an empty herring barrel--but he never
turned up again. Whether he decamped with the bills, or whether he was
put out of the way by a knock on the head, I don't know to this hour.
Anyhow I had to go back to the store the next day, and tell about it.
If you'll believe me they accused me of swallowing the bills, or
otherwise making away with them, and called for a man to take me into
custody. A day and a night I lay in their detention cell, with nothing
to eat and the rats running over me. Oh, wasn't it good! One can't be
nice, over there, our experiences don't let us be; but I always had a
horror of rats. Well, I got over that, Mrs. Gerald."
"Did they try you for it?" questioned Mrs. Gerald, who had suspended
her tea to listen, full of interest.
"Good gracious, no! They let me out. Oh, but I could tell you of worse
fixes than that. _You_ take heart, I say; and never trouble your
thoughts about workhouses. Things are safe to turn round when they
seem at the worst."
The tea over, Mrs. Yorke said she must take her departure: the
children were weary; she scarcely knew how she should get them back.
Hamish had a cab called: when it came he went out and lifted the
little ones into it. Winny looked at it dubiously.
"You'll not tell Gerald that I said he was in a temper about your
book, Mr. Channing?" she said pleadingly, as she took her seat.
"I'll not tell Gerald tales of any sort," answered Hamish with his gay
smile. "Take heart, as Roland tells you to do, and look forward to
better days both for you and your husband. Perhaps there is a little
glimmer of their dawn already showing itself, though you cannot yet
see it."
"Do you mean through Gerald's book?" she asked half crossly.
"Oh dear no. What I mean has nothing to do with Gerald's book. Who has
the paper of cakes?--Fredy. All right. Good night. The cab's paid,
Mrs. Yorke."
Mrs. Yorke burst into tears, leaned forward, and clasped Hamish's
hand. The intimation, as to the cab, had solved a difficulty running
through her mind. It was a great relief.
"God bless you, Mr. Channing! You are always kind."
"Only trust in God," he whispered gravely. "Trust Him ever, and He
will take care of you."
The cab drove off, and Hamish turned away, to encounter Roland Yorke.
That gentleman, making his opportunity, had followed Hamish out; and
now poured into his ear the tale he had to tell about himself and
Annabel. Hamish did not hear it with altogether the stately dignity
that might be expected to attend the reception of an offer of marriage
for one's sister. On the contrary, he burst out laughing in Roland's
face.
"Come now! be honest," cried Roland, deeply offended. "Is it me you
despise, Mr. Channing, or the small prospect I can offer her?"
"Neither," said Hamish, laughing still. "As to yourself, old fellow,
if Annabel and the mother approve, _I_ should not object. I never
gave a heartier handshake to any man than I would to you as my
brother-in-law. I like you better than I do the other one, William
Yorke; and there's the truth."
"Oh--him! you easily might," answered Roland, jerking his nose into
the air, with his usual depreciation of the Reverend William Yorke's
merits. "Then why do you laugh at me?"
"I laughed at the idea of your making two hundred a year at copying
deeds."
"I didn't say I should. You couldn't have been listening to me,
Hamish--I wish, then, you'd not laugh so, as if you only made game of
a fellow! What I said was, that I was putting my shoulder to the wheel
in earnest, and had begun with copying, not to waste time. I have been
thinking I'd try young Dick Yorke."
"Try him for what?"
"Why, to get me a post of some sort. I think he'll do it if he can.
I'm sure it's not much I shall ask for--only a couple of hundreds a
year, or so. And if Annabel secures a nice pupil or two, there'd be
three hundred a year to start with. You'd not mind her teaching a
little, would you, Hamish, while I was waiting for the skies to rain
gold?"
"Not I. That would be for her own consideration."
"And when we shall have got the three hundred a year in secure
prospect, you'll talk to Mrs. Channing of Helstonleigh for me, won't
you?"
Hamish thought he might safely say Yes. The idea of Roland's "putting
his shoulder to the wheel" sufficiently to earn two hundred pounds
income, seemed to be amidst the world's improbabilities. He could not
get over his laughing, and it vexed Roland.
"You think I can't work. You'll see. I'll go off to young Dick Yorke
this very hour, and sound him. Nothing like taking time by the
forelock. He is likely to be married, I hear."
"Who is?"
"Young Dick. They call him Vincent now, but before I went to Port
Natal 'Dick' was good enough for him. My father never spoke of them
but as old Dick and young Dick. Not that we had anything to do with
the lot: they held themselves aloof from us. I never saw either of
them but once, and that was when they came down to Helstonleigh to my
father's funeral. He died in residence, you know, Hamish."
Hamish nodded: he remembered all the circumstances perfectly. Dr.
Yorke's death had been unexpected until quite the last. Ailing for
some time, he had yet been sufficiently well to enter on what was
called his close residence of twenty-one days as Prebendary of the
cathedral, of which he was also sub-dean. The disease made so rapid
progress that before the residence was out he had expired.
"Old Dick made some promises to George that day, saying he'd get him
on because George was the eldest, I suppose; he took little notice of
the rest of us," resumed Roland. "It was after we came in from the
funeral, in our crape scarfs and hat-bands. But he never did an
earthly thing for him, Hamish--as poor George could tell you, if he
were alive. My father always said his brother Dick was selfish."
"You may find young Dick the same," said Hamish.
"So I should if it were his pocket I wanted to touch. But it's not,
you know. And now I'll be off to him. I had intended to spend this
evening at my copying, but I left the paper in the office, and there
was likely to be a hitch about my getting it I'll make up for it
tomorrow night. I shall be back in time to tell you of my success, and
to help you take Annabel home."
Roland's way of taking time by the forelock was to dash through the
streets at his utmost speed, no matter what impediments he might have
to overthrow in his way, and into the fashionable clubhouse
frequented by Vincent Yorke, who dined there quite as often as he did
at his father's house in Portland Place. Roland was in luck, and met
him coming out.
"I say Vincent, do stay and hear me for a minute or two. It is
something of consequence."
Vincent Yorke, not altogether approving of this familiar mode of
salutation from Roland, although fate had made them cousins, did not
quite see his way to refuse the request. As Roland had said, young
Dick was sufficiently good-natured where his pocket was not attacked.
He led the way to a corner in a room where they could be private, sat
down, and offered a chair to Roland.
It was declined. Roland was a great deal too excited and too eager to
sit. He poured forth his wants and hopes--that he wished co work
honestly for just bread and cheese, and to get his own living, and be
beholden to nobody: would he, Dick, help him to a place? He did not
mind how hard he worked; till his shirtsleeves were wet with honest
sweat, if need be; and live on potatoes and half a pint of beer a day;
so that he might just get on a little, and make a sum of two hundred
pounds a year: or one hundred to begin with.
The word "Dick" slipped out inadvertently in Roland's heat. Not a man
living so little capable, as he, of remembering conventionalities when
thus excited. Vincent Yorke, detecting the earnest purpose, the
sanguine hope, the real single-mindedness of the applicant, could but
stare and laugh, and excuse mistakes under the circumstances. The very
boldness of the request, preferred with straightforward candour and
without the slightest reticence, told on him favourably, because it
was so opposite to the crafty diplomacy that most men would have
brought to bear on such an application. Favourably only, you
understand, in so far as that he did not return a haughty repulse
off-hand, but condescended to answer civilly.
"Such things are not in my line," he said, and--face to face with that
realistic Port Natal traveller, he for once put aside his beloved
fashionable attribute, the mincing lisp. "I don't go in for politics;
never did go in for 'em; and Government places are not likely to come
in my way. You should have applied to Sir Richard. He knows one or two
of the Cabinet Ministers."
"I did apply to him once," replied Roland, "and he sent me off with a
flea in my ear. I said then, I'd never ask him for any thing again,
though it were to keep me from starving."
Vincent Yorke smiled. "Look here," said he; "you take him in his
genial moods. Go up to him now; he'll just have dined. If anything can
be got out of him, that's the time."
Mr. Vincent Yorke hit upon this quite as much to get rid of Roland, as
in any belief in its efficacy. In the main what he said was true--that
Sir Richard's after-dinner moods were his genial ones; but that Roland
had not the ghost of a chance of being helped, he very well knew. That
unsophisticated voyager, however, took it all in.
"I'll run up at once," he said. "I'm so much obliged to you, Vincent.
I say, are you not soon going to be married? I heard so."
"Eh--yes," replied Vincent, with frigid coldness, relapsing into
himself and the fine gentleman.
"I wish you the best of good luck," returned Roland, heartily shaking
the somewhat unwilling hand with a grip that he might have learned at
Port Natal. "And I hope she'll make you as good a wife as I know
somebody else will make me. Good night, Vincent, I'm off."
Vincent nodded. It struck him that, with all his drawbacks and
deficiencies, Roland was rather a nice young fellow.
Outside the club door stood a hansom. Roland, in his eagerness and
haste, was only kept from bolting into it by the slight deterrent
accident of having no change in his pocket to pay the fare. He did not
lose much. The speed at which he tore up Regent Street might have kept
pace with the wheels of most cabs; and the resounding knock and ring
he gave at Sir Richard's door in Portland Place, must surely have
caused the establishment to think it announced the arrival of a
fire-escape.
The door was flung open on the instant, as if to an expected visitor.
But that Roland was not the one waited for, was proved by the surprise
of the servant. He arrested the further entrance.
"You are not the doctor!"
"Doctor!" said Roland, "I am no doctor. Let me pass if you please. I
am Mr. Roland Yorke."
"I beg your pardon, sir," said the man, recognizing the name as one
borne by a nephew of the house. "You can go up, sir, of course if you
please, but my master is just taken ill. He has got a stroke."
"Bless me!" cried Roland, in concern. "Is it a bad one?"
"I'm afraid it is for death, sir," whispered the man. "We left him at
his wine after dinner, all comfortable; and when we went in a few
minutes ago, there he was, drawed together so that you couldn't know
him, and no breath in his body that we could hear. The nearest
doctor's coming, and James is running to fifteen likely places to see
if he can find Mr. Vincent."
"I'll go for him; I know where he is," cried Roland. And without
further reflection he hailed another hansom that happened to be
passing, jumped into it and ordered it to the clubhouse. Vincent was
only then coming down the steps. He took Roland's place and galloped
home.
"I hope he'll be in time," thought Roland. "Poor old Dick!"
He was not in time. And the next morning London woke up to the news of
Sir Richard Yorke's sudden death from an attack of apoplexy. And his
son, the third baronet, had succeeded to the family estates and
honours as Sir Vincent Yorke.